Days stopped having names.
The Argatass cut him open.
Healed him.
Cut him again.
They inserted tubes into veins and removed blue fluid litre by litre.
They injected foreign blood, magical catalysts, tissue taken from creatures Kyren never saw alive.
They opened his skull without allowing him unconsciousness because his brain responses mattered.
They forced alternate-reality magic through his nervous system until every nerve felt as though it had been replaced with heated wire.
Whenever Kyren refused to cooperate, they brought Aiko to the glass.
Sometimes unharmed.
Sometimes with a blade against her throat.
Once with three fingers deliberately bent backward until Kyren agreed.
That was enough.
He learned to stop resisting physically.
Hatred did not decrease.
It became concentrated.
He listened.
Watched.
Remembered.
The Argatass eventually told him what they were because they had become convinced he would never leave.
“Race is an obsolete category,” one researcher said while replacing a section of Kyren’s muscle with tissue cultured from another reality.
“We come from every race.” “And yet you’re all bastards.” The researcher continued as though he had not spoken.
“Nature does not determine morality.
Environment does.” Kyren looked through the glass at Aiko.
“That part I believe.” “Then perhaps you understand us.” “No.” The researcher paused.
“Why?” “Because understanding one true thing doesn’t make everything else you do true.” Argatass had gone farther biologically than almost any race Kyren had seen.
They no longer needed to eat.
Drink.
Sleep.
Their bodies recycled what they required.
They lived beneath the earth where entire laboratories crossed dimensions without anyone above knowing.
Through Arg’si, abilities derived from multiple races were unified into structures capable of copying worlds.
The copies could be modified.
Tested.
Sent into alternate realities.
To the Argatass, universes were laboratories.
Their next goal was immortality.
“Death creates nearly every irrational behaviour in intelligent life,” another researcher told him.
“Fear.
Legacy obsession.
Reproduction compulsion.
Religious submission.
Resource hoarding.” Kyren stared at him.
“Then why are you afraid of dying?” The researcher did not answer.
Kyren continued.
“You sacrifice members of other races to avoid your own death.” Silence.
“You sound exactly like everyone else.” The oldest Argatass approached the glass.
“We are preventing greater suffering.” “By deciding everyone else is allowed to suffer for you.” “Some lives create greater value.” “For whom?” “Civilization.” “You’re civilization?” “We preserve knowledge.” Kyren laughed softly.
“Riss fed me, so he thought he owned the right to beat me.
Tyron had status, so he thought he owned Roselle.
Priests had God, so they thought they owned children.
You have knowledge, so you think you own members of every other race.” The Argatass watched him without expression.
Kyren pressed his forehead against the glass.
“Different excuse.
Same ego.”